Arthashastra aparnama Rajsiddhanta

Author(s): Kautilya Acharya,
Publisher: Singhi Jain Shastra Shiksha Pith Mumbai

Page 16

( 3 )
2. The critical Mahabharata Prolegomena of V. S. Sukṭhankar, followed by W. Ruben's critical sample-survey for the Rāmāyaṇa, show what happened in India to great popular narratives. In general, the North preserves a shorter version without regard to grammatical polish and Paninian rules, while the South inflates and rearranges in the interest of logic. In particular, the Kasmiri in the North and Malayalam in the South often preserve archaic readings. For smaller works preserved in numerous copies and local versions, my own work on Bhartṛhari's epigrams yields somewhat different results, when due allowance is made for the formlessness of verses collected by different redactors without the logical nexus of a story or drama. The South again shows logical rearrangement and rigid attention to syntax; North presents growth by accretion but preserves archaisms.
Arth. problem is not similar. The work was never popular in any sense of the word, being at first a special treatise for princes and their high councillors, and later a rare book studied only by the most erudite, e.g. Daṇḍin, Baṇa, and Rajasekhara. Most of the technical terms had become obscure long before the commentators came upon the scene, though some (like the verb apavah) now reflect a remarkable light because of the Aśokan edicts. In any case, the work is represented by very few copies and was, indeed, lost completely till 1905. All southern MSS (including those in Kerala, Adyar, Mysore and in Europe) seem to derive from a single original, which could not have been the Patan text.
The immediate peculiarities of transcription are not very informative. The southerners often interchange the prefixes apa and ava without substantial change in the meaning. The northern folios have some local peculiarities such as an occasional Parasara for sara. North contains somewhat more matter for the same portion than South. Some of this can be explained (as perhaps in 1.19 p. 46) by a marginal gloss having entered into a later copy of the text. The explanation is not too attractive, for the Arth. (and in imitation the later Kamasutra of Vatsyayana) combines sutra maxims in a running text with brief bhāṣya type explanations.
The largest additions in Jinavijayaji's text are of 5 granthas in 1.9 plus a tag anusṭup at the end; 7 slokas in tag verses at the end of 2.2; three granthas or so in 2.3. The remaining differences are of a 5). V. S. Sukṭhankar Memorial Edition (Bombay, 1944) vol. I, pp. 10-140, from his edition of the Adi-parvan, (BORI, critical edition, vol. I, Poona, 1933). 6). W. Ruben: Studien zur Textgeschichte des Rāmāyara (Stuttgart, 1936). See also, the Bhartṛhari edition by D. D. Kosambi, Singhi Jain Series no. 23.